It was nearly a week after revelations concerning Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook user data for the purposes of influencing political behavior came to light that Mark Zuckerberg and his work-wife, Sheryl Sandberg, made public statements about the issue.

Those statements were at first a combination of acknowledgement that something went awry and that there was nothing to see here. Both said that Facebook addressed what they believed to be the issues at the time – late in 2015 – and moved on (Facebook secured a letter from Cambridge Analytica declaring that CA had deleted the data). In the ensuing two years, there were several reasons to think that perhaps Cambridge Analytica had not been truthful. But Facebook didn’t follow up, figuring things were under control and that there was compliance across the board.

Additionally, the polices that had made what Cambridge Analytica did possible were changed four years ago. Whatever there might be to worry about was really just water than had flowed under the bridge a long time ago.

As media attention and outrage mounted, it became clear that more forceful statements needed to be made. They were, and the whole thing culminated in Mr. Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress.

What the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook issue represents does matter, and is important to understand, as I pointed out in a previous post.

But for all the chattering, the headlines, the shared videos of elderly politicians asking a young technology entrepreneur who has risen to become one of the most powerful men in the world, what did we really learn from Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress?

Here’s my brief list of takeaways:

1. Sitting in front of the Senate for hours is hard! Sitting patiently while a politician presents a political point of view in a variety of ways before asking a question that may or may not be germane to the stated purpose of the call to testimony takes a lot of discipline. I have to say, Mr. Zuckerberg did a better job than his work-wife, Sheryl Sandberg. If you watch her on the Today Show, it kind of makes you wince.

2. Facebook is the proxy for a technology and media industry that the political establishment still doesn’t really understand. Most of the folks questioning Mr. Zuckerberg still have their assistants and advisers riding faxes over to each other on the backs of their dinosaurs. But be that as it may, most of us don’t know how things work. A lot of us drive cars, but don’t know about internal combustion. We all flush toilets but couldn’t explain just how the hell the damn thing works. In a world were more and more media and technology seeps into every corner of our lives it becomes important to, if not completely understand how it works, at least ask, what does it want?

3. This isn’t as much about data integrity or security as it is about political ping pong. If it was, there’d be a panel with folks from Equifax, Yahoo, Orbitz, Target, Arby’s, DocuSign, Kmart, Verizon, IHG, Uber – the list is long -- would have been up there; and those just represent breaches from 2017. This was really about Democrats trying to demonstrate how Republicans use nefarious means to manipulate the electorate, and Republicans trying to demonstrate that liberal Silicon Valley wields its power on behalf of the Democrats.

4. Mark Zuckerberg tells the US government, and the rest of the western world, what kind of regulations he might be willing to accept from governments. He voiced support, albeit a little anemic, for the Honest Ads Act, and a requirement informing users within 72 hours of any noted data breaches. But any regulation that meant not being able to use any data for targeting, or the development of facial recognition, would not be looked at favorably.

5. Mr. Zuckerberg is the head of the world’s largest virtual nation: 2.2 billion people actively engage their world through his platform. This makes him – and Facebook – one of the most powerful aggregations in the world. Regardless of whether or not this virtual nation is run as a benevolent dictatorship or operates as a benign anarchy, when so much of who we are and what we do is outsourced to it, constant vigilance is required.

What happens next is important. So many people’s lives are reliant on, shaped by, or made more meaningful by, social media. Whether that’s good or bad is a subject for another time. But for now, it is the case. Whatever decision Facebook makes about itself, or the government makes about Facebook, will have more immediate impact – psychologically or otherwise – on how those dependent on social media live than most changes in the greater media and technology landscape